This lesson is a general overview of overarching concepts in neuroinformatics research, with a particular focus on clinical approaches to defining, measuring, studying, diagnosing, and treating various brain disorders. Also described are the complex, multi-level nature of brain disorders and the data associated with them, from genes and individual cells up to cortical microcircuits and whole-brain network dynamics. Given the heterogeneity of brain disorders and their underlying mechanisms, this lesson lays out a case for multiscale neuroscience data integration.

This lesson describes the fundamentals of genomics, from central dogma to design and implementation of GWAS, to the computation, analysis, and interpretation of polygenic risk scores. 

This lesson contains the slides (pptx) of a lecture discussing the necessary concepts and tools for taking into account population stratification and admixture in the context of genome-wide association studies (GWAS). The free-access software Tractor and its advantages in GWAS are also discussed. 

This lesson is an overview of transcriptomics, from fundamental concepts of the central dogma and RNA sequencing at the single-cell level, to how genetic expression underlies diversity in cell phenotypes. 

This lesson describes the principles underlying functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI), tractography, and parcellation. These tools and concepts are explained in a broader context of neural connectivity and mental health. 

This lesson breaks down the principles of Bayesian inference and how it relates to cognitive processes and functions like learning and perception. It is then explained how cognitive models can be built using Bayesian statistics in order to investigate how our brains interface with their environment. 

This lesson corresponds to slides 1-64 in the PDF below. 

This lecture covers the history of behaviorism and the ultimate challenge to behaviorism. 

This lecture covers various learning theories.

How genetics can contribute to our understanding of psychiatric phenotypes.

A brief overview of the Python programming language, with an emphasis on tools relevant to data scientists. This lecture was part of the 2018 Neurohackademy, a 2-week hands-on summer institute in neuroimaging and data science held at the University of Washington eScience Institute.

Tutorial on collaborating with Git and GitHub. This tutorial was part of the 2019 Neurohackademy, a 2-week hands-on summer institute in neuroimaging and data science held at the University of Washington eScience Institute.

Lecture on functional brain parcellations and a set of tutorials on bootstrap agregation of stable clusters (BASC) for fMRI brain parcellation which were part of the 2019 Neurohackademy, a 2-week hands-on summer institute in neuroimaging and data science held at the University of Washington eScience Institute.

Introduction to reproducible research. The lecture provides an overview of the core skills and practical solutions required to practice reproducible research. This lecture was part of the 2018 Neurohackademy, a 2-week hands-on summer institute in neuroimaging and data science held at the University of Washington eScience Institute.

Since their introduction in 2016, the FAIR data principles have gained increasing recognition and adoption in global neuroscience.  FAIR defines a set of high-level principles and practices for making digital objects, including data, software, and workflows, Findable, Accessible,  Interoperable, and Reusable.  But FAIR is not a specification;  it leaves many of the specifics up to individual scientific disciplines to define.  INCF has been leading the way in promoting, defining, and implementing FAIR data practices for neuroscience.  We have been bringing together researchers, infrastructure providers, industry, and publishers through our programs and networks.  In this session, we will hear some perspectives on FAIR neuroscience from some of these stakeholders who have been working to develop and use FAIR tools for neuroscience.  We will engage in a discussion on questions such as:  how is neuroscience doing with respect to FAIR?  What have been the successes?  What is currently very difficult? Where does neuroscience need to go?

This lecture covers FAIR atlases, from their background, their construction, and how they can be created in line with the FAIR principles.

This lecture covers the description and brief history of data science and its use in neuroinformatics.

This lecture covers self-supervision as it relates to neural data tasks and the Mine Your Own vieW (MYOW) approach.

Félix-Antoine Fortin from Calcul Québec gives an introduction to high-performance computing with the Compute Canada network, first providing an overview of use cases for HPC and then a hand-on tutorial.  Though some examples might seem specific to the Calcul Québec, all computing clusters in the Compute Canada network share the same software modules and environments.

The lesson was given in the context of the BrainHack School 2020.